Current work & more music

Emma is away for a week on a watersports holiday in Croatia and Slovenia and Linda has her busiest week of work ever this week. So I have a relatively clear week and have plans to get huge amounts of work done.

In respect of Philosophy of Science work, I have been studying "Interpretations of Probability", "Bayes' theorem" and various models of "Scientific Explanation". But I am finding the "logical empiricist" background to so much of this rather hard going. I am thinking hard about my actual approach to this course and am pondering on whether to adopt a somewhat maverick approach based, say, on a combination of Taleb's anti-inductivism (per Black Swan) and Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism.

Now I have just about finished going through all the boxes in the garage, I have been unable to find lots of philosophy of science books from my distant past e.g. books by Hempel and Salmon - have I given away in past? Seems a bit unlikely. Maybe they are at mums?

But I am frequently distracted off philosophy of science by other topics that suddenly strike me as far more interesting. So I am also well through Grant's History of Natural Philosophy, various pieces related to Aristotle e.g. articles about the various commentators, a biography of Abelard that I can read without feeling I should be highlighting passages and taking notes and other articles on things like Pythagoreanism.

Some of this is connected with my continuing thoughts on a possible dissertation topic. I am developing some ideas to do with the metaphysical background to Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo which will take in ideas about dissent against religion from other periods (hence the reading of Grant and Abelard). But I have noticed that if I don't write things down as soon as I have a thought, I can't remember it later - a clear sign of aging! So I have begun a detailed time line diagram of my dissertation noting the key areas it might cover. And I am finding loads of really interesting material at the moment

As part of this process I have started selling books again on Amazon. And unlike previous times, each time I sell one, I then immediately buy others with the net proceeds. All these new books are relevant to my course and promise to be really great reads e.g. The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, Gingerich's book from the 500th anniversary of Copernicus's birth, other books by Edward Grant. And so on

And I am finally getting round to some LSE admin. Everything is based around the internet of course and I needed to create an "LSE for You" account and sort out an email account. I have three days at LSE in the next few weeks including the registration day, and two days when there are departmental events to go to - lunch one day, drinks the next. And I need to pay some fees!

On other things, my current listening has mostly been Calexico, various recordings associated with the Buena Vista Social Club movie, the collected works of Loudon Wainwright III, and some amazing recordings I came across of John Peel shows from the late 1960s. These include a complete recording of Peel's last "Perfumed Garden" show for Radio London and six complete "Top Gear" shows from 1969. What a hippy he was!

Over the last week and at the start of this week, the stock market has suffered large falls - once upon a time, this would be all I thought about this week. Now I feel very much the outsider and am very pleased not to be affected.